JONATHAN AITKEN, former Tory Cabinet Minister and upper-class flyman, claims he lied for his country. A claim that was emblazoned across the front page of the Daily Telegraph. I suppose Mata Hari could have claimed to have got ''laid for my country''. A ''sacrifice'' arguably more honourable than his. At the same time the BBC's Panorama about the two British nurses jailed in a Saudi prison was totally lacking in objectivity. Scenes were acted out by members of Equity who obviously learned their trade in the melodramatic school of silent movies. All the Saudis looked like a combination of Sir Jasper the bad squire and a Mafia hit man. This programme was for starters, the main meal was to be the serialisation of the nurses' stories by the Mirror group and the Daily Express.

The usually wog-bashing Sun, New Labour's favoured and favourite tabloid, took the moral high ground, and espoused the fairness of the Saudi courts. After, it has to be recorded, offering a large sum of cash for Lucille McLauchlan's diaries. The offer came too late. The spoils had gone to the Mirror group. The diaries, it should also be noted, were deliberately written for publication, at a price, on her release from prison. This presumption of release was interesting. The story from the very start was enmeshed in big money.

The two British nurses were charged and convicted of murdering an Australian nurse. All were white. Parry was sentenced to death which meant being beheaded in a public place. McLauchlan was sentenced to eight years and 500 lashes. The prospect of Parry having her head chopped off on television must have sent some businessmen and Government ministers scurrying for a change of trousers. It could lead to mass protests against a Saudi regime that truly is neanderthal. Things could get out of hand. Relations could be severed. The oil-rich Saudis are our biggest market in the Middle East, particularly for arms and warplanes.

Under Saudi law the family of the victim can waive the right of execution on receipt of blood money. The brother of Yvonne Gilford accepted a sum well in excess of #500,000 to do precisely that. It was paid by British Aerospace, the biggest British arms company. The Saudis wanted no estrangement with a Britain that could always be relied upon to join with America in defending the Saudi regime whenever it was threatened. This was the purpose of the Prime Minister's visit of a few weeks ago that presaged the release of the two nurses. It was to tell King Fahd that it was business as before, as it was with Mrs Thatcher and John Major. Nothing had really changed.

I'm glad that Yvonne wasn't beheaded and Lucille wasn't lashed. Such punishments are barbaric. But the way their release was engineered was both shabby and mercenary, and the media aftermath has been similarly tainted. It is hypocrisy of a very high order indeed to condemn Islamic law for allowing the payment of blood money, if the condemnation comes from newspapers that pay blood money to those convicted of murder. In response to this criticism the papers involved tell us that the women are innocent. That may be so. But I don't know that, and neither do they. Why would the Saudis frame two British women whose conviction would be such an embarrassment to them? What was in it for the Saudis?

If judicial systems are to be condemned for the regularity of false convictions then the British judicial system stands condemned. For years now I've wondered if any guilty men were in British prisons. Year after year convictions have been quashed because of false confessions, fabricated evidence, dicey forensics, police violence, the planting of false evidence. I could fill this column with the names of those falsely convicted in British courts. Some died before they could be reprieved. There is evidence that in a few parts of Britain the CID harboured the biggest villains in town.

BY no means is this the full picture. Most coppers in Britain are good guys, but that doesn't make the police force perfect. The judiciary in this country is, to a considerable extent, independent. But no-one can be totally abstracted from their upbringing and social circumstances even when they sit in impartial judgment. A thousand little unconscious threads from one's own direct social experiences are woven into one's persona. Our judges, with very few exceptions, come from a very narrow social base. Has there ever been, will there ever be, a High Court judge from Easterhouse? Judges have had a tendency to accept what the police say as opposed to what the accused says. I've never kicked anyone in the head. To do so requires the victim to be on the ground. I was taught in Govan that you don't kick a man when he's down. The lumpen thugs did and we rejoiced when they were sent to prison for

years. Recently in Scotland young middle-class students in a public school kicked another young man to death and got four years each. I think they would have got much longer if they had come from Drumchapel.

In the sixties I worked in London, near to Covent Garden, and about 50 yards from the prestigious Garrick Club. One early evening I saw this toff coming out the Garrick absolutely steamboats. Two beat coppers grabbed him by the arms. Come on, sir, you've had one too many. Shall we get you a taxi home? This they duly did. Helped him into his seat. Wished him goodnight. I thought, aren't our coppers nice. The very next day, at almost the same place, I saw a market porter who had obviously been sampling the bevvy. He was blootered, though not as blootered as the toff the night before. The same two coppers came on the scene, but the benevolent tolerance of the night before was no longer there. The market porters of those times were very well-paid. He could easily have afforded a taxi. But he wasn't offered one. Instead he was huckled off to the station. Maybe I'm only imagining things, but the

thought persists if the porter had only worn pinstriped trousers and a bowler, had spoken with a different accent, he might have gone home that night in a taxi.

The point I'm getting at is this. To presume the innate superiority of our institutions over those of all other people's is presumptuous nonsense. Our law has many fine features, including democratic reforms brought about through mass struggles. Our very right to vote had to be fought for. Our institutions are tainted with residues of feudalism. Our tabloid press in particular is consumed with the awfulness of xenophobia. In England they are manically xenophobic. They invent stories. They make news rather than reporting what is really happening. They are in the business of manipulating minds to further a political agenda that benefits their owners. Press bosses are now the Tammany political bosses. To them deference is paid by prime ministers and presidents.

If what the Mirror and Express groups have generally said in the past week about the Saudi regime is true, and I think it is, then these two newspaper groups should be campaigning for sanctions against Saudi Arabia. That will be the day. There's too much dosh involved. And dosh is more important to them than democratic principles and civil rights.